As vessels of mercy unto honor and glory, we have been prepared by God unto glory through glorification-the last step of God’s full salvation. Romans 9:23 tells us that the vessels of mercy have been prepared unto glory, and Romans 8:30 indicates that glorification is the last step of God’s salvation. We are predestinated, called, justified, and, eventually, we shall be glorified. Glorification includes the redemption (transfiguration) of our body (Phil. 3:21) and full conformity to the Lord. In this final step of His salvation God will redeem our fallen and corrupted body (Rom. 8:23) by transfiguring it into the body of Christ’s glory. He will also conform us to the glorious image of Christ, His firstborn Son (Rom. 8:29), making us wholly and absolutely like Him in our regenerated spirit, transformed soul, and transfigured body. Thus, our body will be freed from the slavery of corruption of the old creation into the glory of God’s new creation (8:21).
We have seen that the believers are symbolized by the branches of the vine (John 15:5, 8). Now we need to see that the believers are also symbolized by the branches of the cultivated olive tree. Romans 11:24 tells us that we “were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree.” In this way we “became a fellow partaker of the root of the fatness of the olive tree” (v. 17).
The cultivated olive tree in Romans 11:24 is the God-chosen race of Israel with Christ as the reality of their life and everything (Rom. 9:4-8). The cultivated olive tree is not merely Israel-it is Israel with Christ as reality. Apart from Christ, the children of Israel are empty, void of reality. The book of Romans reveals that they are God’s chosen people with Christ as their reality.
Christ is the root of this cultivated olive tree. Apart from the root a tree is nothing. Christ is the root of the God-chosen race of Israel. Furthermore, the riches of the olive tree for our enjoyment are in Christ as the root of this tree. If a tree is cut off from its root, it loses everything. Today Israel is still rejecting Christ and thereby cut off from Him. But one day they will come back to Him. During the time in which Israel is cut off from Christ, we, the Gentiles, are being grafted into the cultivated olive tree that we may enjoy Christ as the root of the fatness of this tree.
Hosea 11:1 and Matthew 2:15 prove that Christ is the reality of the life of Israel as the cultivated olive tree. Hosea 11:1 says, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” Matthew 2:15 applies this prophecy to Christ’s being brought out of Egypt. Therefore, this prophecy and its fulfillment join Christ to Israel. Hosea 11:1 and Matthew 2:15 prove that Christ is absolutely united to the race of Israel. In fact, God even considers Christ to be Israel, because He is the root of the cultivated olive tree. If the stump and branches of a tree are regarded as the tree, surely the root of the tree must even the more be considered the tree itself. This certainly is true of Christ in relation to Israel.
The Gentile believers as the branches of this cultivated olive tree have been grafted into it to be fellow partakers of the root of its fatness, that is, to enjoy the riches of Christ, who is the root of the children of Israel. We praise the Lord that we, the wild olive tree, have been grafted into God’s cultivated olive tree that we may be fellow partakers of its root of fatness. This is our enjoyment.
Our being grafted into the cultivated olive tree is altogether a matter of life. For the branch of a wild olive tree to be grafted into the cultivated olive tree is for it to receive the life of the cultivated tree. What we needed as Gentiles was not to change our religion but to receive the life of the root of the fatness of the cultivated olive tree, which life is Christ. Through our faith in Christ we have been grafted into the olive tree cultivated by God with Christ as life, and now we are enjoying the riches of the root, the riches of Christ.
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